


I

by Crowgirl



Series: Building [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Home Improvement, M/M, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: A small town, a hardware store, a fixer-upper house.





	1. Chapter 1

Tony falls in love with the town and Steve falls in love with the house.

Technically, Tony was already in love with the town; he’d just forgotten about it until Steve was looking through a box of old photographs and asked about one of a very small Tony standing with his mother on what looked like a lakeshore. 

Within fifteen minutes, Tony had a map pulled up on his phone; five minutes after that, Air B’n’B, TripAdvisor, and a local rental agency; five minutes after that, they had the booking.

The house they don’t see until their second day. The first had been almost entirely Steve trailing around after Tony as Tony dove in and out of small stores, up and down streets, and finally collapsed on a bench beside the lake, exhausted and slightly sunburnt and relaxed in a way Steve hadn’t seen in far too long. Finding the house the next day just feels like a bonus.

Steve’s mom would have called it ‘a fixer-upper.’ Tony’s dad would have called it a firetrap. Steve and Tony agree that it’s perfect.

What makes it even _more_ perfect, in Tony’s eyes, is the hardware store guy. 

They’ve gotten to the point, in Tony’s estimation, right _before_ they both admit that this isn’t a weekend-and-day-off hobby any more. More and more of their favorite things are migrating here each trip; the coffee shop closest to the house knows their favorite order; they’re starting to have favorite walks around the lake. 

So it’s on one of the last days before they make the admission out loud to each other that Tony goes into the little hardware store on the little main street of the town on the off-chance he can find the drill bit he wants here rather than driving to the Home Depot half an hour away.

There’s no-one at the register near the door, but a man’s voice calls ‘Be right there!’ from the back as the bells over the door fall quiet.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tony calls back, already migrating towards where he can see the right sort of things. ‘I’m good.’ 

He gets distracted by shelf brackets and lamp shades once he finds the bit he needs; the store isn’t very wide, but it’s remarkably deep and there’s way more stuffed into the space than Tony had thought from the outside. He’d assumed it was the usual sort of small-town place that would sell you antifreeze and a snow shovel in the winter, charcoal and an American flag on a plastic stick in the summer. Instead, it’s like someone folded up a Home Depot and a Whole Foods, stuffed it into a space approximately a quarter the size of either, and stuck random other things designed to distract Tony Stark into whatever space was left.

He finally hauls himself away from a display of stained glass suncatchers -- **Locally Made!** the sign proclaims -- with two strung from his fingers and makes his way back up to the register. 

‘Here, let me take those--’ The young man behind the register reaches out and carefully unhooks the suncatchers from Tony’s hand, laying each one down on a small brown paper bag he folds over the fragile glass. 

This gives Tony just about enough time to recover from the fact that the hardware store guy is a fucking _god._ He’s a little taller than Tony, dark hair, dark eyes, skin tanned a shade of golden brown that Tony wants to lick. He’s got a rough canvas apron folded around his waist and a red t-shirt with the store’s logo that’s just tight enough to show muscle Tony wants to bite. 

‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ The guy secures the brown paper with a fragment of tape and glances up at Tony, shaking his hair back out of his eyes. 

‘Yes,’ Tony agrees wholeheartedly. 


	2. Chapter 2

Tony visits the store half a dozen more times -- enough that The Guy, as Tony has begun thinking of him because he never wears a nametag, greets Tony with a brief smile and a nod -- before Steve happens to come in with him. 

‘I’ve got to see the place that’s seduced you away from Home Depot,’ Steve is saying as Tony pushes open the door. The tiny bell rings above their heads and The Guy calls out, ‘Be there in a minute.’

‘No rush,’ Tony calls back and hears a soft snort in answer. 

Steve is looking around, craning his head back to see how high the shelving goes, the network of old gardening implements slung across the ceiling in somebody’s attempt at decoration. Tony watches him look around, spin the little stand of seed packets around a few times and pluck out hollyhocks and sweetpeas, then get distracted by a display of baseballs by the register. ‘Hey, I had one of these when I was a kid.’ Steve picks one up and bounces it in his palm, testing the weight.

‘So what can I--’ The Guy slips in behind the counter and stops dead, as if Steve had reached across the counter and slapped him. 

Steve glances up, then drops the ball. It follows the slight slant of the concrete floor and ends up at Tony’s feet. He stoops to pick it up and tries to figure out what the hell just happened. 

The store has gone completely silent and Steve and The Guy are just staring at each other like they’re in a contest to see who blinks first. The Guy has gone a weird shade of grey under his tan and Steve has gone white to his hairline.

‘So...’ Tony tries but the silence seems to eat his attempt and he stops.

‘...Steve?’ 

‘Bucky.’ 

The Guy -- Bucky, apparently -- grabs onto the edge of the counter and Tony darts forward before he can think and ends up in a strange triangle: he and Steve each with a hand on one of Bucky’s forearms. As soon as Tony realises what he’s doing, he expects Bucky to pull away -- he doesn’t seem like the touchy-feely type -- but he doesn’t. He swallows hard once or twice, not taking his eyes off Steve.

‘I didn’t know I was engineering a reunion,’ Tony offers.

Steve shakes his head slowly. ‘I don’t… how long, Buck?’

‘Uh --’ Bucky licks his lips. ‘Twenty years. About.’ He glances down and seems to realise for the first time that he’s being touched. He backs away immediately and Steve’s hand falls to the counter with a smack.

Tony looks between the two men and decides that honesty is probably his best policy at this point. ‘Guys, I’ve got no idea what the hell is going on here. Do I need to call the cops or get you to a bar or what?’ 

‘The bar,’ Bucky says immediately and Steve nods.


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky downs two shots of vodka in complete silence. Steve just waves the bartender away and watches Bucky. Tony opts for coffee and slips the bartender a fifty and a meaningful nod. The man palms the bill, nods back, and fades gently away to the other end of the bar. The music system starts up a few minutes later for which Tony is profoundly grateful. It’s early enough that they’re the only people in here apart from a couple of waitstaff cleaning tables and the bartender but he’s just as happy if whatever is going to happen here can’t be overheard.

And something _is_ going to happen here because Steve is starting to show signs of that kind of stress that vents itself in an eruption of some kind. Tony doesn’t know The Guy -- _Bucky,_ he reminds himself, although that has to be a nickname, right? -- well enough to know for sure, but he’s got the look of a man waiting for the punch.

Bucky drops the empty shotglass back onto the bar and stares at the back wall for a minute, then sets his jaw, rolls his shoulders, and turns to Steve. Steve, in turn, studies him for a long moment -- long enough for Tony to edge quietly closer on his stool just in case -- then wraps his arms around Bucky with such suddenness that Tony hears the breath whoosh out of Bucky’s lungs.


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky stands perfectly still for a moment and Tony almost winces away from the stricken look on his face.

Then he buries his face in Steve’s shoulder, wraps his own arms around Steve’s waist, and Tony becomes vividly aware that the relationship that has been the core thing in his life for the past ten years is changing in front of his eyes.

He clings to his coffee cup and tries to pretend he’s totally cool with that and it isn’t making something that feels very like cold, heavy dread curl up in his stomach. 


	5. Chapter 5

Tony sits and keeps his mouth shut and watches Steve and Bucky have the kind of reunion that features repeated attempts to let each other go, lots of sentences no-one finishes, and a suspicious brightness in the eyes. And he thinks.

He and Steve -- see, they’re not like that. And he doesn’t just mean not like the whatever the hell it is that’s happening in front of him but if Steve were to turn around and say, ‘Well, Tone, it’s been nice. See ya,’ he wouldn’t have a comeback for that. 

Steve started out as his PA a little less than ten years ago. Fresh out of business school, as shiny as they come, and Tony wanted to ruin him from the first five minutes in his office.

That took about three years because, it turned out, Steve Rogers had a spine of fucking titanium and an ethical code to match and if he wasn’t going to bend, then, by God, Tony was going to have to straighten and that was _hard._ And by then they’d been friends -- like _actual_ friends, like the kind Tony didn’t generally have, and in the end it had been Steve who marched into the office at the end of a Friday, dropped a letter of resignation on Tony’s desk, hauled him out of his chair by his tie, and kissed him nearly senseless. 

Losing the best PA in New York for the kind of lover he’d never honestly thought existed Tony could live with. Even in Clint Barton did make smug comments every time they met about having stolen Steve away from him. Fuck Barton, anyway; he didn’t have Steve, Tony did. Even when they fought, when Tony vanished into a case of Scotch when a design was stolen, when Tony’s eye wandered, when _Steve’s_ eye wandered -- hell, even when they stopped _talking_ to each other, Tony knew, somewhere in the back of his fucking mind, that it would come out right. And, in the end, it always had.

Looking back on it -- as, in front of him, Bucky takes a deep, slightly unsteady breath and steps back from Steve -- Tony thinks that out of the past five years, it had taken three of them for him to fall in love with Steve, two to be nearly done being scared out of his mind by that, and--

‘Tony.’ Steve drops a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, brings him forward a step as if presenting him to Tony. ‘I want you to meet James Buchanan Barnes.’

\--and about half an hour for it to all come crashing down. 


	6. Chapter 6

‘Jeeze, Rogers, what’s wrong with you.’ Bucky grimaces. ‘You know I don’t answer to any of that.’

Steve sighs, rolls his eyes, and no-one but Tony would probably notice his hand tighten slightly on Bucky’s shoulder. _‘Fine._ Tony, this is Bucky.’

‘Better.’ Bucky sticks out his hand. 

Tony takes it. ‘And I’m guessing you two know each other?’ 

‘That obvious, huh?’ Bucky grips firm for a minute then lets go. 

‘I read people well.’ It comes out sharper than Tony intended. 

‘We were -- we were best friends growing up,’ Steve says, finally dropping his hand and reaching absently for Tony’s coffee cup. 

Tony sees Bucky’s gaze dart between them. ‘Yeah. Next-door neighbors and everything.’

‘And you were together for how much of that?’ Tony wouldn’t normally be quite so blunt but his nerves are feeling just a touch jangled. Steve glances at him sharply but says nothing.

‘’Til I enlisted,’ Bucky says without hesitation. ‘From _his--’_ He elbows Steve gently. ‘--thirteenth birthday.’

‘Til you ran away,’ Steve corrects and finishes Tony’s coffee in one swallow.

Bucky grimaces again and shoves his hands in his pockets. ‘I didn’t… run away. You make it sound so fucking dramatic.’

_‘I_ make it sound so fucking dramatic? _You_ were the one who was there on Thursday night and gone on Friday morning!’

Bucky shifts uncomfortably and Tony sees his gaze slide quickly to the shot glass. 

‘My folks were movin’ -- you knew I was going to go--’

‘Not into the _Army!’_

That explains the stance and the muscle at least. Tony had thought it was a bit overmuch for a small town hardware store owner. 

Bucky licks his lips and Tony absolutely does not notice that they are absolutely suckable lips and he absolutely does not for one heart-stopping moment imagine Steve doing just that. ‘I told you I wasn’t going with my folks.’

‘I thought --’ Steve stops short and snaps his mouth shut and Bucky looks at him with the expression of one who has just received a revelation.

‘You thought -- you thought I was coming to _your_ \-- oh, fuck, Stevie--’

‘Stevie?’ Tony blurts without thinking. He’s never heard anyone call Steve anything other than Steve but no-one seems to hear him.

Steve is staring straight ahead, a muscle jumping in his cheek and Bucky’s hand is fluttering over his shoulder. 

‘I -- shit, Stevie, I didn’t -- I never -- I put a--’

‘We found your note Friday night,’ Steve says tightly. ‘Mom cried all weekend.’ 

‘Oh, fuck.’ Bucky sits down with a thump on the stool closest to him and Tony just reaches over the bar to grab the bottle. The bartender catches his eye with a frown and Tony shakes his head impatiently, slides the bottle to Bucky, then wrestles his wallet out, flourishes another fifty, and drops it where the bottle had been. 


	7. Chapter 7

Tony waits until Bucky has poured for himself, then takes the bottle and pours a healthy dose into the coffee cup Steve is still holding. He taps the bottom of the cup and Steve glances down at it. ‘Drink up.’ 

Steve makes as if to protest, then shrugs and knocks it back.

‘Shit, Steve, I am so...I am so sorry.’ Bucky’s running his hands back through his hair over and over, shaking his head. ‘I wrote to you; I -- from bootcamp and -- you never wrote back so I thought --’

‘You wrote? I never got anything.’

‘Holy Jesus God,’ Tony says faintly and takes a shot straight from the bottle. He’d never seen his life as a melodrama before but apparently life had just been holding out on him. 

‘I did! I sent -- postcards and -- two letters and--’ Bucky stops as Steve just keeps shaking his head. ‘You didn’t get _any_ of them?’

‘Not one.’ 

‘Six-three-two East Street--’ Bucky stops as Steve stares at him. ‘What?’

‘Avenue,’ Steve says slowly. ‘East _Avenue.’_

Bucky’s eyes go wide and the color drains back out of his face. ‘Oh, shit.’ 

Steve stares at him expressionlessly for a long minute, then the corners of his mouth begin to twitch. ‘You always got that wrong. Remember when we tried to order pizza?’

‘And the guy ended up on the other side of town -- he was so pissed--’

‘The place wouldn’t deliver to our street after that,’ Steve says and bursts out laughing. 


	8. Chapter 8

Tony leaves a hundred on the bar when they go -- he figures he owes the bartender for being so patient with three crazy people who took over the corner of his bar for the best part of four hours and killed three bottles between them. Admittedly, the last one had been mostly him because there was nothing else for him to do as Steve and Bucky filled in twenty years.

* * *

Much to his surprise, Steve had come home with him and, as Tony sits on the front porch with a bottle of beer slowly warming between his palms, is sublimating through weeding.

Tony takes a sip of beer and watches Steve knee his way along the overgrown border, using the sharp edge of the trowel to cut out dock root and throwing clover on a separate pile for the little girl next door who has a rabbit. 

He itches to ask: _So what now, buddy? Do I leave or you leave or what?_ But he also doesn’t want to know. Being the smartest person in any given room often only means he sees the disaster coming before anyone else. 

Steve sits back on his heel and twists around to squint at Tony. ‘I can feel you watching me.’

‘That ass deserves admiration. Can’t let it feel unappreciated.’ 

Steve rolls his eyes, but that’s a familiar expression, affectionate, and Tony clutches the bottle. 

Steve pushes himself to his feet and comes across the lawn. He takes the bottle out of Tony’s hands and takes a long drink, then puts the bottle aside and drops a knee on either side of Tony’s hips, easing his weight into Tony’s lap. 

Tony puts his hands on Steve’s hips, steadying him, and tries to think of some clever remark to make but all he really wants to do is bury his face against Steve’s dirty t-shirt and beg him not to leave. But Tony Stark does not beg. He might cajole, wheedle, nag, bribe, and manipulate, sequentially or all at once as seems most appropriate, but he does not beg. So he slips his hands over Steve’s hips, letting his thumbs drag in the crease between hip and thigh, and strokes his fingertips lightly over the curve of muscle in his lap. ‘Want some more direct appreciation?’ 

Steve hums and wriggles slightly. ‘I could be.’ 

‘Big morning,’ Tony says noncommittally, tracing his fingertips upwards to the small of Steve’s back. 

Steve lets out a long breath, ruffling Tony’s hair. ‘Yeah.’

‘Wanna not think for a bit?’

‘Yeah.’ 

‘I can do that.’ 

**Author's Note:**

> Just so we're all on the same page here: I have no idea what's happening here. I have no plan. I have no outline. I have no notes. I have no nothing. I wanted a pure-fluff-sandbox, so I made one. Based on how every other series I have ever written has gone, it will turn non-chronological pretty soon and the rating will definitely go up.


End file.
